The Conversation on Vocational Singleness

 Pieter Vaulk, founder of Nashville Family of Brother and EQUIP Ministries, has published a new article in Christianity Today sounding the call for eople in the Church to actually discern whether they are called to vocational singleness or marriage, rather than assuming the latter, which is where our current culture places value and expectation:

"Unfortunately, some church leaders teach their congregants (directly or indirectly) to assume they will get married while neglecting the Bible’s teachings about discernment. Some Christian young adults chase the idol of romance and default to marriage while ignoring the Bible’s teaching about divorce and child rearing. Others continue in involuntary singleness without leveraging it for the kingdom. Yet even in the Catholic church where celibacy is celebrated, less than 1 percent of Catholics accept a call to permanently give up dating, romance, marriage, and sex for the sake of single-minded kingdom work. There are too few workers for the harvest.
How can our churches raise up more kingdom workers to heal our communities with undivided attention? Our churches need to become places where young adults genuinely discern whether God is calling them to vocational singleness or Christian marriage."

Pieter goes on to detail four ways that pastors can encourage those they are leading to consider vocational singleness. Christianity Today linked another article at the end by Natasha Moore, Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity, considering the situation and contributions of women who were and will be unexpectedly single, if only because of the issue of numbers within the Church and without (and also includes a fun flowchart quiz titled "Which Historical Christian Single Are You?").*

"Post–World War I Britain offers an illustration of a community awash with what the newspapers termed an “excess” of nearly 2 million women—1,100 women for every 1,000 men. Novels from the period capture this abundance of so-called spinsters, as well as the flourishing of new forms of female independence. One of my favorite examples appears in Dorothy L. Sayers’s detective fiction. Her hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, starts a bureau for “surplus women” under the flappy but formidable Miss Climpson, which deploys otherwise underemployed single women to help with his cases.
Sayers’ tongue-in-cheek portrait of undercover spinsters helps me look at the makeup of our churches in a new light. If there is a statistically significant number of Christian women who would, under other circumstances, be investing much of their time and energy into raising a family, what could that surplus of strength accomplish? It’s just like the God I know to turn an often unchosen and perhaps unwanted circumstance to unexpected good. What task might he be preparing that only an army of Christian “spinsters” would be equal to? (When I floated this idea by a friend, her response was: “I hope he wants us to solve crimes.” We’re keeping our options open.)"

Besides being utterly delighted of seeing the word "spinster" at all in a Christian publication, I am also pleased that the conversation about how to be single and how to support singleness in the Church is making it's way to the mainstream.

And while I am ecouraged, I am still in what Pieter calls "the limbo of uncommitted singleness." While I am trying to look ahead and away from the idol of marriage, I cannot pretend that I have fully extricated the expection from my heart. Even while I have watched my father navigate the pain of becoming a widower twice, the feeling remains that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all (I know, I know, cliches are the worst). I cannot make myself fully accept that singleness can be just as beautiful, even while I am sure that I can be just as productive. But even if I can't accept it, this is where my life is. How do it live it fully and beautifully to the honor and glory of God, without accepting it?

I'm not sure what to do other than to continue placing my heart before the Lord, being honest about where I am, and continuing to say, "Your kingdom come, Your will be done."

*I'm Julian of Norwich, duh